One of the more verbose pieces of liberalist trash I've read for a long while, and also one of the more pretentious. Name-drop Freud, Jung, Lacan, etc., make a plug for the "tolerance" cliche and liberalism generally - and BINGO! You've propped up your credentials as an "award-winning author". Kinda prompts me to wonder just who made such awards.

Ever seen any filthy rich liberalists demonstrating their "empathy" and thereby "tolerance" by understanding the experience and perspective of the poor whom they exploit? What vacuous concepts Moorhouse pushes here.

Especially slimy where Moorhouse insinuates that opponents of artistic kiddie porn must have some motive arising from dark, imaginary links to unconscious experience of "strangers and the news" and "early childhood and family relationships". Psychobabble contrived into the defence of photos of underage public nudity, as marketed to rich adults. Hmmm, Moorhouse must have some very "refined" friends, some maybe even up to his own forays into depictions of such human mystery as "the Unconscious"?

Get your imagination around this: photographs of naked children, as used for entertainment purposes a la Henson, are prohibited by civilized society on the grounds that they are child pornography. In civilized society, such sex crime brings penalties of imprisonment and later surveillance, via police registration, in the interests of public health and safety.

Oh, sorry - I just realize: he wasn't referring to civilized society at all.

Henson found himself in much the same position as someone with Aspergers Syndrome , shunned and vilified by probably the most persons .

Notice how the anti porn spinners all lept in to condem , the most notable was Kevin Rudd one could speculate that Rudd has never been to an Art Gallery , all though he knows about Porn ie American strip shows where participants are not allways adults .

It would be extremely difficult to sell the notion that Henson is not an artist . He has the tech mastered . If you defined Porn , you wouldn't be describing Hensons work . As for what some deviate might do with it , some of Hensons work , well a Target Catalogue would probably be more fun for them ?

Very old paintings have Nymphs flying around , these painting can be found in the finest Gallerys . Perhaps they should be protected , all Hensons detractors should be warned off lest they be tempted to over paint the "Pornie" bits with a texta .

What's the bet if we raided Rudds Home we would find snaps of Rudds kids in a toddlers pool in the bollie , perhaps a reflection of Rudd in the water indicating him doing a Henson .

If Hensons high profile detractors were fair dinkum they would direct their attention to the "Net" and clean up the disgusting porn there .

Yawn, here we go again. Is it "art" or "porn"? Target catalogues. Concern about some guy called Rudd. Old paintings of fictitious naked cherubs. And a spray of varnish for sophisti-ma-cayshun: "I go to a gallery".

The corruption of the culture is always so clear when such weak-minded, small-picture perspective prevails, as it certainly does in the farcical Henson and Papapetrou cases.

Actually, I thought it was an interesting little philosophical article. During the Henson brouhaha, I wasn't surprised at the moral panickers, but I remain intrigued as to why some otherwise perceptive and intelligent people were so condemnatory of what is ultimately pretty innocuous art.

Further, the vehemence of the philistinism expressed by many who condemn Henson's art came as a bit of a surprise. It seems that there is a real hostility towards art per se among a significant proportion of the community. I think that Moorhouse's reflections on the role of the imagination are an interesting way of looking at why it is that some people are so apparently antipathetic to art that explores the boundaries of social values.

Yeah, Moorhouse's take is very interesting if you've never read a sleazy and pretentious resort to psychobabble meant to discredit any dissent, and in advance!

Ivan Durrant's art is a powerful, contrary example, and goes some way to explaining his own anti-Henson dissent and disgust. Koons' facetious and, in this context, at least equally dissident combinations of highly stylized "art photography" with XXX porn destroys completely any of the expensively stupid deliberations on Henson by the dullard snobs of the Oz Classification Board.

The smears of "philistine" are still unsustainable and very boring. Does that mean veteran artist Ivan Durrant, for just one artwold example, is a "philistine" too?! Such a presumptuous label around this case smacks of precisely the pretentiousness and snobbery that helped earn the Hensonites such widespread public revulsion (quite aside from the case's central moral concerns).